One of the biggest mistakes you can make in life is basing your happiness on your life’s circumstances. Often we tell ourselves that we’ll be happy when some future event happens. “When I can make a little more money, then I’ll be happy”, “When my kid shapes up, then I’ll be happy”, “I’ll be really happy when this rocky period is over!”

The first (and smaller) of the two problems with this is that waiting around for something to happen before deciding to be happy deprives you of all the happiness you can be experiencing right now.

The much larger problem, however, with this attitude that happiness depends on something outside your own conscious intention is that it impedes the manifestation process of attaining the very things that you’re basing your future happiness upon.

How is this? Because in manifestation (as in electromagnetism) like attracts like. Joy attracts joy. Love attracts love. And happiness attracts happiness. Likewise, unhappiness attracts unhappiness, misery and sorrow attract misery and sorry, and so on.

By choosing to be happy now, regardless of your life circumstances you are claiming a tremendous power already always working within you – but now with you in charge. You can choose to be happy in the face of your life circumstances and in so doing will allow the universe to produce in your life the evidence supporting that state of happiness. The life circumstances validating your inner state of happiness.

In other words, first you feel happy then your life reorients itself around that happiness. It does not work the other way around.

If you are waiting for happiness to come in the form of some thing or event, then you will always be waiting for happiness to come. Because even if that thing or event does occur there will always be some thing else for you to instantly attach your happiness to.

Either we take ownership of our emotions or we are slaves to them, always seeking release, never finding it. There’s always something else to want: better looks, slimmer body, a loving relationship. And wants are good – they’re the seeds of creation. But if we’re the type of people who attach our happiness to the flourishing of the plant that seed has the potential to grow into, then every seed we plant will be another reason to put off our happiness for a later date. And another reason to feel anxious and worried and uncertain while we wait.

If you understand the principles of the Law of Attraction, then you know that the all-important third and final step of the process is to allow that which you desire to come into your life. And the way you do that is with feeling – emotion. The process requires you feel now what it will be like to have the fulfillment of your desires, as if it’s already happened.

For example, if you want a new car: you put the intention out there into the universe, you trust that your request has been received and granted and that the fulfillment of your desires is on its way, and then you ready yourself for its arrival by filling yourself to brimming with the feelings of fulfillment that energetically resonate with it. In other words, a new car is not going to come to someone who doesn’t feel they deserve it. And happiness does not come to someone who can’t take it.

When it comes to manifestation, happiness is a desire like any other. To manifest it outside yourself you first must manifest it inside.

Live life purposefully manifesting, through focusing!

’til we meet again,

Walk in Beauty;
Walk in Peace.

‘Causing the Miraculous by Spreading Beauty, Truth & Harmony‘

Johnathan Brooks, MAC, PG Dip is a Life Coach who has trained in a wide range of personal development treatment methods including the “Power Therapies” (CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (postgrad), EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, Master NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming) and has a Post Graduate Diploma in ‘Coaching and NLP’ which he passed with a ‘Commendation’.

He is a full member of the Association for Coaching (MAC) and is a Gold member of The Professional Guild of NLP.

Giving to Receive – From The Heart

February 10, 2013 By Johnathan

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” ~ William Arthur Ward

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, I thought it might be a good time to reflect the concept that: Giving produces receiving. The energy that makes up everything in the universe is constantly in motion. It is constantly flowing from one thing to another; flowing in and out and in and out again. Like breath. We cannot just inhale. We must also exhale. That gives us life. And likewise, giving of ourselves to another, or to the world gives back to us in life-giving ways.

Giving is a powerful way of engaging in the flow of all that is. It’s like jumping into the rushing river, trusting that the current will carry you somewhere beautiful. By giving, you show the universe that you trust completely that you’ll be taken care of, because how else could we take our attention off ourselves and put it on another? If we didn’t know that we were okay?

By giving, you release energy and make space for new energy to come in. Which brings us to what happens when we don’t give. When we don’t give, that energy stays bottled up inside us. In fact, imagine just that – imagine a soda in a bottle sitting unopened and forgotten. What happens? It loses its fizzle, its life-force, and grows stagnant and distasteful, never fulfilling its destiny. By only taking and never giving, by hoarding (which is really what it is) we cut ourselves off from the flow of energy, of life-force, in the universe, and cause the energy, the life-force, within us to grow stagnant, itself cut off from the flow to which it once belonged.

The way this flow works is amazingly simple – anything we put out into the flow is what we get back, and magnified. In other words, if we put out love into the world, more love is what we receive in return. If we put out scarcity and selfishness, then more scarcity and selfishness is what we receive in return. The flow is quite literal that way.

This knowledge can be an open door for you to walk through and claim untold levels of happiness and abundance. However, before you step through the door, be aware…

Receiving only comes from giving that is done without the intention of receiving any personal gain from the gift. In other words, it must be selfless giving. This is the paradox in the power of giving.

While giving produces receiving – you can’t give with the intention of doing it so that you will receive anything in return. That completely counteracts the gift of giving. So what to do? How do we make use of this knowledge if we can’t use it intentionally?

By cultivating a naturally giving nature within. Start small, looking for ways you can give of yourself, and then do so. It’s okay right now that you know you’re also doing this for your own gain. That will fade in time as the innate and instantaneous rewards of giving build up in you – those being the inner joy and fulfillment that come automatically from giving of yourself to another.

As you keep doing this, you become a naturally giving person. It will simply be a part of your nature. And by then you will no doubt have already started seeing the fruits of your efforts coming back to you, and abundantly so.

Live life purposefully manifesting, through focusing!

’til we meet again,

Walk in Peace; Walk in Beauty.

‘Causing the Miraculous by Spreading Beauty, Truth & Harmony‘

Johnathan Brooks, MAC, PG Dip is a Life Coach who has trained in a wide range of personal development treatment methods including the “Power Therapies” (CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (postgrad), EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, Master NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming) and has a Post Graduate Diploma in ‘Coaching and NLP’ which he passed with a ‘Commendation’.

He is a full member of the Association for Coaching (MAC) and is a Gold member of The Professional Guild of NLP.

That’s right – nobody has to lose in order for anybody to win. You do not have to lose in order for someone else to win; and nobody has to lose in order for you to win.

And if you don’t like the competitive analogies of losing and winning, here are some other ways to look at it. Nobody has to fail in order for anybody else to succeed. Nobody has to do without in order for anybody else to be fulfilled.

The energy that comprises everything in the universe is infinitely abundant – that means there is more than enough of it for everyone. Our world may not show much evidence of this sometimes, but that doesn’t discount the fact that at its source – at our source – it’s all available to all of us. The evidence we see in our world to the contrary only shows the degree that power and greed can affect our consensual reality. And how far we’ve strayed from our natural state of infinite abundance.

There’s a term called a “zero sum game”, and it basically means that there is only one winner in the end – winner take all! Any sporting event – football, baseball, basketball, golf – is a zero sum game. As is Monopoly and gin rummy and Clue. But life is not.

Life is not a zero-sum game. Life is not winner-take-all. Life is infinite abundance.

And by virtue of simply being alive we are a part of that energy. In fact, we are one with that energy, which means that we are all one with each other. We are all connected. And that is why either we all win or none of us win. Either we all succeed, or none of us succeed. Either we all have, or none of us has. Everyone is connected, and what connects us is our infinite abundance.

Now, the way that you can engage with that connection is start to come from a place of understanding that you are not in a war with your fellow human beings for a limited supply of food and life essentials. Because it just isn’t so.

When you start to come from this new place of understanding, when you begin perceiving the world as your ally and not your enemy, as being on your side, as being a part of you, then the world starts treating you the same. This in turn makes it easier for you to trust your perception and start treating the world that way – as part of you and you a part of it. And by “the world” we’re talking about the people and creatures and environment that make it up. Because perception is one thing, it’s just a start. Action and behaviour come next.

And when you start doing this, when you start engaging with the world in the universal energetic source of all abundance, you win and everybody wins.

The key to doing this is simple: seek out win-win situations wherever you can. That is one in which everybody feels good in the end. That the solution in some way served their needs. That they were treated as fairly as everyone else.

And just watch how fast things start going your way.

Live life purposefully manifesting, through focusing!

’til we meet again,

Walk in Peace; Walk in Beauty.

‘Causing the Miraculous by Spreading Beauty, Truth & Harmony‘

Johnathan Brooks, MAC, PG Dip is a Life Coach who has trained in a wide range of personal development treatment methods including the “Power Therapies” (CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (postgrad), EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, Master NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming) and has a Post Graduate Diploma in ‘Coaching and NLP’ which he passed with a ‘Commendation’.

He is a full member of the Association for Coaching (MAC) and is a Gold member of The Professional Guild of NLP.

When the book and subsequent movie of The Secret came out, people everywhere were buzzing about its revelation: the Law of Attraction. Revealed as the key to the prolific success of some of history’s greatest minds, like Michelangelo and Thomas Jefferson, the Law of Attraction is a powerful insight into the workings of nature that can be consciously, intentional used as a tool for manifestation. A tool whose ideas underlie many, if not most, other manifestation processes.

As big a “secret” as it may be (or rather, may once have been) it is actually quite a simple concept to understand. It is divided into three steps for manifesting, or “attracting”, anything you want into your life. Those three steps are as follows:

1. Ask
2. Accept
3. Allow

Now let’s break these steps down for you, one at a time.

1. Ask

To have what you want, you first must know what you want. Asking is a process of letting the universe know what you want. And maybe even more importantly, letting it know that you know what you want.

Why is this important? Because in doing so, you’re generating a very clear and decisive energy. The source likes that. The clearer and more definitive, the better. Because it is that clarity of vision of knowing what you want, coupled with the singularity of desire that comes from asking for it that targets the “object” of your desire with laser-point accuracy.

2. Accept

Most people have some experience with step 1. Whether in prayer or goal-setting, most of you reading this have already at one time or another asked for what you want. Many of us also know (some, all to well) the experience of asking for what we want and not getting it. That is because asking for it is only the 1st step of the process, and many people either stop here or worse, take actions completely counterproductive to the law of attraction. We ask for what we want, then we promptly, clumsily get in our own way and thwart it’s manifestation.

What actions? Those they display doubt and uncertainty about getting those goals met. Like whining and fretting and complaining about “not having” it yet. Like worrying about your future should you not get it, or worse taking actions that imagine it not happening instead of taking actions that imagine success.

That’s where steps 2 and 3 come into the picture.

Step 2, or Accept, could also be called Receive, because it’s about trusting that your request was heard, and more, that it’s been granted. It’s the meaning of “Ask and ye shall Receive”: that in the asking, you instantaneously set in motion a cycle of energetic events that has the object of your desire already on its way to you.

So what do you do? You sit back and relax, content in the knowledge that your request has been heard and granted and you can move onto other things. If you don’t, and you constantly obsess over this thing you want to manifest, then you’re showing the universe that you don’t really believe it’s coming. You push it away with your distrust of the process instead of accepting that it’s on its way.

3. Allow

The other way we push the manifestation of our desires away is with a sense of undeserving-ness. We don’t act like we get what we want in life, so our life produces evidence of that. But if we act like we get what we want in life, our life produces evidence of that. We must Allow the fulfillment of our wishes to come into our life by creating the energy that supports their existence.

And the way that we do that is by feeling inside what it’s like (not what it would be like, but what it is like) to have the fulfillment of your desires here and now. If step 2 is about Knowing, step 3 is about Feeling. You must exude the energy of someone who’s living as if their next fulfilment is on its way, like a houseguest. You need do nothing but prepare your home for their arrival.

Live life purposefully manifesting, through focusing!

’til we meet again,

Walk in Peace;
Walk in Beauty.

‘Causing the Miraculous by Spreading Beauty, Truth & Harmony‘

Johnathan Brooks, MAC, PG Dip is a Cognitive Behavioural Coach who has trained in a wide range of personal development treatment methods including the “Power Therapies” (CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (postgrad), EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, Master NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming) and has a Post Graduate Diploma in ‘Coaching and NLP’ which he passed with a ‘Commendation’.

He is a full member of the Association for Coaching (MAC) and is a Gold member of The Professional Guild of NLP.

Christmas candles of Hope for the rebirth of goodwill between all men.

Although all Christmases are hollowed by those who are professed Christians, this year has particular importance for all mankind, many of whom hold their own special festival around this time.

This year, because of the cyclical nature of the energies of our universe, offers a time of particular opportunity for man to enter a new era of growing awareness of the true nature of our world.

This could be described as taking a significant step along our evolutionary spiral path towards what Pierre Praderrand in his beautiful book ‘The Gentle Art of Blessing’ calls a greater awareness “of the unlimited good embedded in the very texture of the universe.”

I could here stop writing this message apart from urging you to obtain the book as gift to yourself, and extra copies to hand out or lend to the many people who feel hopeless about attracting more goodness, love, joy and a sense of wholeness into their daily lives – and that means a very great many of us, but I would also like to add a personal note and tell you about the Christmas blessing of new hope that has recently come to me through the re-telling of an old prophecy from the Amazonian and Inca peoples, (Lynne Twist’s book ‘ The Soul of Money’ and Barbara Marx Hubbard’s book ‘Birth 2012 and Beyond’)

As some of you may know, my birth parents were Native Americans (First Nations). I was adopted out of my tribes (Cheyenne & Cree) by a white couple in America, and later fostered by another couple in England. As you can imagine I was very unsure as to where I really belonged.

It was while I was writing a chapter on my life for an American book called, ‘Two Worlds: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects’ (published by Blue Hand Books 2012) that I became more aware of the differences in outlook of my two worlds.

On the one hand, I realised part of the anguish felt by indigenous people as they lost their personal identity in the gradual genocide of their tribe by absorption into other cultures, was to do with their separation from the rest of the created world – their brothers and sisters, the family of Mother Earth; while on the other hand, the more technological peoples’ side seemed to behave as if only they mattered as they wished, Father Thomas Berry calls this ‘Species Isolation’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Berry).

These two types of people were called in the prophecy, the Condor and the Eagle people. The Condor people were those who perceived life through the five senses and the heart, and were grounded in the spirit world. They were at risk of survival through their encounters with the Eagle people.

The Eagle people were those who perceived life through the mind, and in spite of great wealth, were also in peril of surviving. In their case because of the spiritual impoverishment.

The coming together of these two (the Head and the Heart) into what is called elsewhere, the Universal Human, was said to take place at the beginning of the third millennium – which is now, and will eventually bring a new era of ‘balance’ and ‘light’.

Chief Seattle said, “This we know, the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family.”

I think you will agree there are some hopeful signs that man is becoming more ecologically responsible and less self centered, and is using technology for the greater good. He is showing more compassion for suffering humanity whatever its culture. There are beginnings of unity and wholeness. I send all the blessings of Christmas to help us on the long way we have still to go.

M-E-R-R-Y Christmas and Happy New Year!

Love & Blessings

PS: For those who think this is all too way out (Eagle people), I would like to assure them I try to keep up to date with reports on the worlds’ future from NASA as well as those from the ancient wise ones!